Patricia Ryan - [Fairfax Family 01] (23 page)

As she rode through the main entrance and into the public courtyard, flanked by Rainulf and Thorne, a beautiful, hypnotic chanting arose from the direction of the church.

Rainulf smiled. “‘Tis later than I’d thought, if they’re reciting vespers already.”

Thorne said, “You two seem pleased. What’s so special about vespers?”

The priest scowled at his friend in mock outrage. “All the offices of the Church are special, you heathen!”

Leaning conspiratorially toward Thorne, Martine whispered, loudly enough for her brother to hear, “But vespers is particularly special, because it means supper’s not far behind!”

Rainulf groaned and Thorne chuckled. His smile was so generous, so open, and when he looked into her eyes, she felt that same odd sense that she had when she first saw him standing on the pier at Bulverhythe Harbor... that he looked not at her, but into her, into her very soul, her heart.

“You’re
both
heathens!” Rainulf said. “One’s worse than the other.”

In truth, Martine had smiled not in anticipation of supper, but of an entire month in this wonderful place, so like St. Teresa’s. For, although she shared none of the religious fervor of the nuns who had brought her up, she had found the structure and harmony of convent life much to her liking.

She took a deep breath, as if to absorb the ethereal chanting, with its stately, soothing cadence. Although the voices intoning in unison were male, not female, the sound was comfortingly familiar to her. She felt a sense of rightness, of belonging. She felt as if she were coming home.

*   *   *

“Was that
Prayers to the Virgin
I saw you reading this afternoon?” Martine asked, setting down her eating knife and lifting her goblet.

“Aye.” Thorne grinned inwardly, knowing she was deliberately sowing the seeds of another supper-table argument. Her enthusiasm for
disputatio
amused him—and her skill at it impressed him greatly. A week had passed since their arrival at St. Dunstan’s, and during that time she’d won more of their debates than she’d lost.

The Saxon was glad not to have to join the monks for their silent, meatless dinners in the refectory, as did Rainulf, who had chosen to completely immerse himself in monastic life. He and Lady Martine ate their daily meals in the main hall of the prior’s lodge, sitting across from each other at the one small table. Their initial reticence with each other had quickly melted into the camaraderie of those who find themselves thrown together for a time in a strange place, with only each other for company.

During the day they explored the lush countryside surrounding the monastery. Their favorite place was a section of Blackburn River that twisted and turned deep in the woods to the north. The lively waters had carved through the underlying bedrock, creating moss-lined walls of stone pitted with caves, a secluded, otherworldly gorge. Here they took leisurely walks along the high, rocky bank, sometimes picking their way carefully down to the river itself, where they would sit and talk for hours. Sir Thorne always held her hand to guide her steps as they descended, but at no other time did he allow himself any physical contact with her. He took great pains to be a real friend to Martine—and no more than that. It was often difficult to keep from touching her, from saying things that were best left unsaid, but so far he had managed to do so.

It surprised both of them that they had so much in common, not just intellectually, but temperamentally. They recognized in each other the pride and hardheadedness that defined their own characters, as well as something deeper and more difficult to voice... an emptiness, a need.

“I take it my choice of reading material surprises you,” he said. They both took liberal advantage of the monastery’s small library, often taking turns reading the same books—Greek and Roman classics so far—and then discussing them like learned clerics.

She lifted an eyebrow. “Considering you almost never attend mass? Yes!”

“Faith takes many forms, my lady.”

She paused thoughtfully, her indigo eyes glittering in the warm, wavering candlelight. At times, Thorne mused, it was almost painful to look upon her beauty.

“Are you truly a man of faith, Sir Thorne?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I did take up the cross for Mother Church.”

She smiled wryly, and now it was to her mouth that his gaze traveled, to those luxuriously full lips—berrystained red, with a perpetually swollen look about them, as if they’d just been roughly kissed. The thought stirred his loins, and he silently chastised himself for his undisciplined imagination.

“I’m afraid your going on Crusade proves nothing,” she said. “Rainulf tells me that some of the vilest scum of Europe took up the cross, merely for the loot they were able to collect along the way. Others went in the hope of having their own sins forgiven, and hadn’t the slightest interest in recovering Jerusalem.”

Thorne nodded and leaned back in his chair while Cleva, Brother Matthew’s cook, cleared their trenchers. “I regret to say I sought neither plunder nor absolution, my lady. I was one of the third type—God’s poor, Louis called us, because we were full of faith and gullibility. I actually
wanted
to recapture the Holy Land, and I was willing to give my life for the cause.”

He spoke calmly, but Martine noted an edge to his voice that betrayed deep bitterness, a despair that had healed with a thick scar.

He sighed and took a generous swallow of wine. “At least those who died did so thinking we would succeed—that we would free Jerusalem and return to a hero’s welcome. They never knew how badly we would fail, and how miserably most of us would be received when we finally did get home.”

Cleva set a bowl of spicy-sweet star anise on the table. Martine took one of the little gray-brown kernels and chewed it pensively while she reflected upon Thorne’s early years—his initial piety, his brutal imprisonment in the Levant, and finally the homecoming he’d so longed for, only to discover his family’s cruel fate. “‘Tis a wonder you’ve any faith left at all,” she said.

“Oh, I still believe,” he said quietly, and met her eyes. “Not the same way I did when I was young, of course. As a boy, I was” —he smiled sadly— “very innocent. I believed in a merciful God, a God of love.”

“And now?”

He rose and crossed to the chest in the corner where the chessboard and chess pieces were stored. “I know better now. I know that God—well, that God has something of a temper, and that it’s best not to cross Him lest He decide to exact retribution.”

“It sounds as if you define faith as fear.”

He set the board on the table and dug into the two green sacks that housed the chess pieces, withdrawing one pawn of each color. “And I suppose you have a better definition.”

“Peter Abelard did,” she said. “He said faith was private judgment.”

Thorne hid his hands behind his back for a moment, then presented both fists to Martine, each closed around a pawn. She reached out to his right fist, hesitated, then tapped his left. He opened it to reveal the white pawn, his mouth curved in a sardonic smile, which Martine understood perfectly; she almost always picked the white. She laughingly snatched up the pawn, then shook the rest of the white pieces onto the table.

“Abelard,” Thorne said as he took his seat and poured out the black pieces, “wrote many clever and insightful things, but he did not write the gospel. I know that your personal theology is rather... unformed, and I’m sure Abelard’s teachings suit you perfectly, but they don’t quite suit me.”

Martine arranged her pieces on the board. “He was brilliant!”

“Aye, exceptionally brilliant, but he was just a man, and a flawed man at that.”

She slapped her bishop down with a crack. “Abelard was no heretic. His supposed sins were forgiven by those who convicted him.”

“I’m not speaking of his beliefs,” Thorne said. He paused in setting out his own pieces and glanced at her, looking vaguely uncomfortable. “I’m speaking of Héloïse.”

“Ah. Well, love is a powerful force” —she felt her cheeks grow warm— “or so they say. There are those who would argue that it can’t always be resisted.”

Thorne lined his pawns up with military precision. “It can if one is strong enough. As an officer of the Church, Abelard was expected to be celibate. But he was weak, and he suffered as a result. Loving Héloïse was a mistake, as he undoubtedly realized with startling clarity when her uncle’s thugs broke into his room and—” he glanced up sharply at Martine and then placed the last piece on the board, “emasculated him.”

“Castrated him,” Martine corrected. “I prefer to call things by their honest names. You seem almost to approve of such a harsh punishment for simply falling in love.”

Thorne sat back and studied Martine until she grew self-conscious and dropped her gaze to the chessboard, pretending to contemplate her first move. “Sometimes falling in love is not so simple,” he said quietly. “There can be consequences. Abelard knew the consequences, but he lacked the self-control to keep from falling in love.” He paused thoughtfully, then added, “I would not have made the same mistake.”

Martine’s face burned as she inspected her pieces. She took a deep breath, then raised her eyes to Thorne’s. “Neither would I.”

With all the composure she could summon, she slid her queen’s pawn two spaces forward, then nodded coolly toward the chessboard. “Your move, Sir Thorne.”

Late one afternoon, as the sun painted stripes of gold across the fields, Martine watched Freya make her first kill, a fat little partridge. Sir Thorne explained that he would let her eat her victim this one time, though in the future, of course, she would be trained to give it up.

“Watch,” he said, as the falcon dropped down to claim her prize. “First she’ll plume it and then she’ll break in, starting with the left wing.” At Martine’s look of confusion, he said, “She’ll pluck off the wings and eat the flesh.”

When she did exactly that, Martine shook her head in wonder. “How did you know?”

Laughing easily, the falconer said, “There’s little about birds of prey I don’t know, Martine.”

His use of her Christian name instead of “my lady” appeared to surprise him as much as it did her. He looked away, his jaw clenched. Martine thought he was being a bit hard on himself, especially considering his customary disregard for convention. It was a small oversight, and one that pleased her, in a way. He rarely said her name, and she liked the way it sounded, spoken in his earthy English accent.

He frowned as he watched Freya tearing at the little bird. Amused but touched by his embarrassment, Martine said, “Will she be fully trained by the time we go home?”

“Home?” Confusion flickered over his features. “Oh, you mean Harford. Aye, she should be, for the most part.”

“Of course I meant Harford. ‘Tis your home, is it not?”

“‘Tis Sir Godfrey’s home.”

He withdrew a silver-handled dagger. Kneeling over the partridge, and taking care to keep out of Freya’s way, he split its skull, exposing the brains. Freya instantly began feasting on the soft white tissue. Although Martine appreciated that Thorne was merely rewarding his hunting bird with a treat, she found that she had to look away.

Thrusting the dagger’s blade into the dirt, the Saxon said, “I’ve not had a home of my own since I was a child.”

Martine pondered this for a moment. “Nor I.”

He met her eyes briefly and then wiped his dagger on his leathern leggings and stood up. “You will in a few weeks. You’ll have one as soon as you’re married.”

She nodded. “And you’ll have yours soon after that.”

A troubled expression passed across Sir Thorne’s face before he marshaled his features and returned his attention to Freya. They both watched in heavy silence as the falcon feasted on her prey.

*   *   *

He was watching her.

Martine saw Thorne out of the corner of her eye, standing with her brother in the middle of a nearby meadow. Freya clung to his fist, and a couple of borrowed spaniels sat at his feet. He had hooded the white falcon, her training evidently concluded for the morning. Now he appeared deep in conversation with Rainulf, although his attention seemed focused on Martine as she explored the monastery herb garden.

She squatted next to a particularly homely little plant and considered its large, hairy leaves. Ass ear, some people called this one. Also comfrey. But the nuns had always referred to it as knitbone, and so that’s how Martine thought of it. She had hoped to find some here. It was one of the most important of the healing herbs, but difficult to start from seed. Since she wanted to include it in the garden she planned for her new home, she decided to take a cutting from this one to bring back to Harford. Removing her sharp little eating knife from its pouch on her girdle, she chose a branch, quickly shaved off its lower leaves, then severed it at an angle.

Yes, he was watching her. And not for the first time.

Whenever she felt his eyes upon her, she grew pleasantly warm from her scalp to the tips of her toes. A curious, delicate thrill consumed her. It felt very much like that time Felda had combed her hair as she drank the brandy... a kind of shivery tickle that left her slightly off balance.